HOT DAMN #39 — Losing Weight

LIFE’S WONDERS PRAISED IN SUGGESTIVE, ODDBALL, AND NONSENSE WAYS

As a counterpoint to my usual cynical antics, I’ve committed myself to a weekly, year-long discussion of my life’s joys.  But, never one for the more traditional approaches, I intend to keep things a little off side, a tad outlandish, and always one foot outside of polite company.

//LOSING WEIGHT//

Some people just can’t gain weight. They eat and eat and eat, yet not a pound is gained. They are notoriously forever skinny and their gluttony goes unfettered by the usual consequences of saddlebags or bulging food babies.

I am not one of these people.

No, if I eat my favourite foods (namely, peanut butter), I gain weight. All my life I’ve maintained a respectable weight, but there have been times when I’ve dipped my toe in the buttery world of chunk – once in grade eight, and then again much more recently.

Yes, this is what my scale actually said. And then it crumbled under my unbearable girth.

About three years ago, my doctor told me that my weight was “okay,” but that I should keep an eye on the belly fat. After all, my family has had a long and consistent love affair with diabetes (not to mention high blood pressure and heart disease).

Three years and twenty pounds later, I realized I’d listened to exactly zero of what my doctor had said. In fact, I was flirting pretty aggressively with the 200-pound mark. We were almost bedfellows. By all accounts, my trousers were already off and the lights had been dimmed; all I needed was some Barry Manilow and a bottle of lube and I was set.

But I wasn’t happy.

Worse, I was starting to look like a chunker again. Not since eighth grade had I managed that feat. Back then, it was still kind of cute; now it was just depressing — I was thirty and putting on weight like it was my career.

Something had to change. Turns out that something was me.

And so change I did. In two and a half months, I dropped about thirty pounds. No trick diets, no extreme exercise regime. I just had to stop consuming 3000 calories a day. I started by counting my calories … every goddamned one of them. It sucked, but it did the trick. I went from 3000 cals/day, to around 1800 cals/day.

Voila. Easy peasy.

Except, not really. Every minute of it sucked. “Hanger,” as it turns out, is a real thing. No, not the place where planes are stored, but the smashing together of hungry and angry.  Why staring into a stocked pantry cupboard should make me seethe with rage should be obvious, but you wouldn’t think it would manifest with such regularity. But it did. A lot.

Now, I know many people struggle with their weight, and many of those same people might kind of hate how “easy” it was for me to lose my excess baggage. How dare I celebrate my weight loss. My chunk was barely even that. I was so far away from being “fat” that I should probably just keep my loss to myself. I don’t truly understand the struggle.

And maybe they’d be right.

But they can suck it.

This is my blog – I’ll celebrate what I want. Because I run this joint. King Kong ain’t got nothing on me … except maybe for weight.

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Did you miss last week’s entry on THE APARTMENT LIFE?  Catch up here.

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